Although Dan Druff what are almost certainly the real reasons behind this affair, there appears to be some confusion amongst US residents and non-US residents alike about the matter of whether any US laws might have been broken by UK company Playit Ownit Ltd, or by Canadian company Excapsa.

Although it would be nice to think that non-US companies are not governed by US laws, I fear that this is not the case. The recent Executive Life scandal in California not only had a French bank fined under US law, it also had a French bank caught between California law and US Federal law, which appeared to disagree with each other.


In this case I think that Sarbanes-Oxley might be a more relevant act to assess than the 1933 act -- partiularly section 906 of Sarbanes Oxley, which states that:

"each periodic report filed under Section 13(a) or 15(d) of the Exchange Act containing financial statements (e.g., any Form 10‑Q or Form 10‑K) filed by a domestic or foreign issuer be accompanied by a written statement of the CEO and CFO."

Without going into the horrific complexities that tend to accompany any attempt to offer non-US equity, or corporate bonds, or securitizations to US investors (it's no coincidence that many non-US financial web sites now try to stop US residents from accessing their pages or, if they do allow access, point out that the details contained therein are not intended for US consumption), suffice it to say that non-US companies are very careful when it comes to offering anything inside the US, mainly because it is a far more regulated country than most European countries and certainly far more regulated than any emerging economy.


Part of the reason that the US is not particularly concerned about this is that, in economic terms, it is far more isolated than most European countries. In the US a vast majority of GDP is generated internally, and what foreign trade there is is mainly with Canada and Mexico. This is one of the reasons that people in the US worry less about what looks to overseas eyes to be a stonkingly unsustainable trade deficit, solely financed by printing more dollar bills and T-Bonds, which are eagerly snapped up in China and elsewhere.

The emergence of online poker has, to an extent, put US online poker players in a far more "international" position than most of their peers. For many, this is an unusual experience. I have met many (senior) people in US companies who, for example, had no idea that paper sizes were different in Europe. Knowledge of how financial systems work overseas (e.g., mortgage, banking and insurance regulations) tends to be narrow, even within financial operations. This is fair enough, since for most Americans overseas financial regulation would never affect them.

In the case of online poker, it is now becoming necessary to understand overseas financial law because a number of US companies (and online poker players such as yourselves) are becoming involved.

A couple of brief and salient points.

1) Forget about phoning average Joe class-action Lawyer if an affiliate stitches you up. International law is expensive and if you lose jurisdiction (i.e., if your lawyer fails to get the case heard in an ideal place like Florida or Texas, but has to fly over to London or Tel Aviv), you will find that jury awards are considerably more parsimonious. For this reason, Joe class-action Lawyer is unlikely to want to have anything to do with an international case.

2) Foreign companies, if they are unlikely to need to worry about operating in the US in the future, are pretty much invulnerable. The only effect might be the "Polanksi Syndrome", meaning that it might be dangerous for an offending senior executive to land in the US. So, if a foreign-registered company (which all onine poker companies are) takes your $30K deposit, there is (legally) unlikely to be much that you can do.

Pete